Syllabus

Course Description

The aim of this course is to enable participants to bring together materials from various disciplines bearing on our current environmental crisis, and from this integrated perspective to evaluate possible ways in which the crisis might be resolved. Disciplines to be consulted include ecology, thermodynamics, economics, value theory, and environmental history, among others. This project will rely on the integrative skills of philosophy to discern how materials from these disparate sources fit together.

Course Objectives

• To encourage students to think critically about our current environmental crisis. In particular, to consider the role of economic growth and values surrounding consumption and how these issues relate directly to environmental degredation.

Prerequisites

none

Required Textbook

Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis. Sayre, K.

Other Reading

• A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. Ponting, Clive. 1993.
• A Sand County Almanac. Leopold, Aldo. 1949. (preview)
• The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth. Boulding, Kenneth E. 1966.
• The Limits to Growth Revisited. Meadows, D.H. 1988.
• Earth in the Balance. Gore, Al. (1992). (preview)
• Curitiba: A Global Model for Development. McKibben, Bill. 2005.

Grading